Western Trip #2 Day 8: Portland, Oregon-July 15, 2019

After yesterday's really long day, my daughter J and I decided to cut ourselves a break and sleep in until 8:45. The fact that we had a lot that we wanted to see today kept us from sleeping any later.
It had rained overnight and was still gray, when we got to breakfast at 9. The day seemed to call for a warm breakfast, so I had oatmeal. I also didn't know when we'd be eating again, so a hearty breakfast seemed called for.

We packed up water bottles and some almond butter granola bars. We took the thistle backpack, too.
When we got outside, it was cloudy and 67 degrees. We could see our hotel now and it was nicely landscaped.

When we left at 10:47, the odometer read 43582.  We set off for Washington Park. We'd come to Portland, because J had only been to the airport. I'd come here as part of my "50 before 60" trip, when Oregon completed my quest to see all 50 states before I hit 60. I really wanted her to see the International Rose Test Garden and she wanted to see the Japanese Garden, which is across the street from it. I'd enjoyed that garden, too, and didn't mind seeing it again.
Driving into the city wasn't too bad, but driving up the hill that the park is on wasn't fun. There are multiple attractions up there, so I suppose it isn't surprising that we had to pay to park in spot 279 in front of the rose garden. J paid the $8 at the machine, as I noted that it was 11:10 and we'd driven 9 miles.
We went across the street to the Portland Japanese Garden first, only to find out it didn't open until noon. So, back across the street and around the tennis courts we went to see the roses. The path was very nicely landscaped, and, since the garden is free, there are no walls to block your view, when you arrive.

 

Portland is called the "City of Roses", so it is entirely appropriate that they have this garden of 7,000 plants with 550 varieties. The clouds kept us from seeing Mt. Hood, but it did not stop folks young and old from coming to enjoy the flowers and to photograph them.
Quite honestly, they were in stunning form. So many where is full bloom and droplets of water from the overnight rain looked perfect on them.  I did have one variety that I fell in love with, which I'll get to, but this is my favorite photo. I love the light coming through the petals. I have no idea what variety it is.

So, you are about to see a lot, and I mean a lot of photos of roses. If roses aren't your thing, feel free to scroll down.
We'll start with  a couple that show a bit of the variety the beds exhibited.

The next ones are one's for which I could find no identifying tags. They are stunning, even when you don't know their names. Notice not only their color(s), but the variety of petals. Some are veritable balls of petals.

 

   

 Some of these have very little, if any scent. But, most have that full glorious rose scent so absent from store-bought roses that have been bred to last, not to smell pretty.
I found signs naming all of the following. If it had what type of rose it was- hybrid tea, floribunda, etc.- I'll put that, too.

Artistry

Fragrant Plum, Grandiflora

Gemini (For obvious reasons!)

Anna's Promise, Grandiflora

Daybreaker

Gentle Giant, hybrid tea

Ketchup & Mustard (so apt!)

Lady of Shalott, English

Lava Flow, Floribunda

Love & Peace, hybrid tea

Mister Lincoln (the one we have at home)

Over the Moon, hybrid tea

Charisma

Rubiyat by Arnold Yeomans, 1966

Sutter's Gold by Peter Glazer

Sweet Fragrance, grandiflora

Teeny Bopper, shrublet

Veteran's Honor

Wollerton Old Hall

Zaide, shrub

I think, I'll save my favorite for last. So, here are a couple of interesting signs, as well as the darkest rose in the garden, Ink Spots, which is a hybrid tea rose.

 There are roses in the garden named for various people- Barbra Streisand, Dick Clark, and others. My favorite rose today was also named for a person, Neil Diamond. Now, he's a fine singer, but that is not what I loved about this rose. First, it was its amazing variety. Every photo below is a Neil Diamond. Incredible! Second, that deep pink, almost red is gorgeous.  And, last but not least, it smelled heavenly. I texted photos home to my husband and told him I want this plant.

 

By 1:40, the sun was out and we were getting hot, even though it was only 69 degrees. So we got a hand-dipped ice cream bar from a cart for $3.50. Then, we went into the shop, where I got travel rose perfume, a pair of socks with roses and another pair that said Glasgow with a rose, that looked distinctly Rennie Mackintosh. Plus, I'd just been to Scotland, so I had to get them.

On the way to the car to put our purchases in the back, we saw beautiful hydrangeas, or, as we called them in Maryland, snowball bushes.

Then, it was 2:08, when we each paid $18.95 for our tickets. Because of my knees, J insisted we take the shuttle up the hill to the actual entrance. That was probably a good idea.

 The garden is supposedly the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan. It is not full of showy flowers like the International Rose Test Garden. Rather, it is full of beautiful trees, ponds, streams, and landscaping. People are quieter here, in keeping with the space. The sound of running water is quite soothing and its nice when it is quiet enough to here it.

 

There were two zen gardens. In the larger of the two, the circles around the large rocks were meant to represent the ripples in the sea caused by a dropped stone. It was impossible to tell how these were made without leaving footprints.

 There was a nice shop and J found a wall hanging for me to get for her as a gift. I found a couple of netsuke that would be perfect in my miniature scenes, including a rabbit that would be great in a garden.

As we were leaving, we saw this beautiful plant. I think it is fuchsia.

We were back in the car at 3:32 to head even further up the hill. The trip included a really weird turn at a light that led immediately into a hairpin turn. At 3:45 (43593), we were parked in the upper parking lot for Pittock Mansion.
We took some photos on our way up to the garage, which housed the ticket booth and a separate shop. The entry fee was $12, but, thanks to AAA, we each paid $11.

 

 The house was built in 1914 for Portland newspaper publisher Henry Pittock, his wife Georgiana, and nine family members by Edward Foulkes. You enter at what was the back of the mansion. The original driveway came up from the downtown side of the estate. The landscaping is fabulous. The sign leaves a lot to be desired.

 

The tour is self-guiding and there are lots of great signs. We did not dilly-dally, as the building closed at 5. The grounds would be open until dusk or so, which gave us more time for that later.

One of those helpful signs was on the ground floor, early in the tour. It explained who all those people were who lived in the house.

Neither the back of the house nor the front, as you'll see later, gives any indication that interior walls are curved. It was quite a surprise. It also made the house seem more elegant. 

There were signs that explained what happened to the house after the family moved out. There were others that explained that much of the furniture in there now did not belong to the family. It was donated by other families and chosen to reflect what life would have been like when the family was here. I'm not going to go through each room and say what belonged to whom. It wasn't something I cared too much about, when visiting. I did take photos of all the signs and they do tell about the provenance of a lot of the furnishings.

The first room we saw was the Family Room. Here is where they would play games, read, etc. The ceiling was really lovely. I recognized a picture on an easel as Multnomah Falls, which we had sort of seen in the dark last night.

The Music Room was bright and long. The fireplace on the opposite wall was mostly for show, as there was central heat. They had a very nice view out the window onto a stone porch.

Times have certainly changed. Not only do we not have music rooms in most of our homes, but the gentleman's smoking room is a thing of the past, too. The one here is near the formal front door and has a lovely tiled, curved ceiling.

As you would expect, there was  dining room, but it wasn't as fancy as some I've seen. That said, the family really only used it on formal occasions, taking their meals in the breakfast room instead.

Between the dining room and the kitchen was a Butler's Pantry. Now, there's a handy room that should be brought back. It's a great place for storing stuff and having food on deck to be served, as well as warming ovens to keep it warm. In the kitchen, you could see some of the tile that used to be on the counter and you could see the view the cook had. The Pittocks made sure that they had the modern conveniences that would help them hire a good cook.

I'd love to have the food storage space they had. In addition to a pantry that was a small room, there was a refrigerator room to keep fruits and vegetables cool. There was a large refrigerator was in the basement to keep milk and meat cold.

The breakfast room was charming, but there is no way that 11 people ate there all at once, but the sign claimed there used to be a table there with nine chairs.  I particularly liked the sideboard or hutch or whatever it is called that is built into the wall.

I suppose that I was concentrating too much on climbing up the grand staircase, but for whatever reason, I failed to photograph it from the ground floor. I did take pictures from upstairs, though.

 We could only visit the second floor, not the third, due to structural issues. A sign told us what we were missing and it didn't seem like much. 

This floor was trickier to navigate, because, while some rooms flowed one into the next, some spots were dead ends. There were various bedrooms for daughters, the nieces, etc. This room and bath are pretty typical. You'll notice the fancy shower, complete with shampoo dispenser.

One of the daughters ran the house and her office was up here.

A sign claimed that it was typical for married couples to have separate bedroom suites, but that didn't seem to be the case with the daughters and their spouses. In any event, here is Mr. Pittock's. The bed seems awfully small and it really is his original bed. The clothes are incredibly organized and that shower has a lot of nozzles! He also had a tub and a smaller tub for washing his feet, but it was still a good size.

There was a sewing room up here and it is nice and bright. They had examples of handwork, as well as an old Singer sewing machine. Then, there was Georgiana's room and her bed is a reasonable size even though it was not her bed in reality. By the way, she was 16 when she married Henry, who was 26! They had at least 8 children, 6 of whom made it to adulthood. They also had 18 grandchildren. She was about 69, when they moved here.

There were children who lived here, so they were sure to have a child's room. Also, there were not enough bedrooms for everyone. So, they had what was called the West Sleeping Porch for the children. When Georgiana and Henry died (1918 and 1919, respectively), the children moved into their rooms.

We made our way down to the basement, partly to see it and partly because there were restrooms down there. We got to see the laundry and where deliveries were made.

We climbed the stairs one last time and made our way out to the garage to visit the shop at 4:40. I found a cool miniature of the house in a matchbox, as well as an expensive- $4!- postcard. 

Now, we could take our time and look at the front of the house, as well as the views of Portland. We were not the only people doing that. In fact, while we were inside, we had seen folks outside peering in the windows. It's a free park, so, why not?

Like the back gardens, the gardener had done a really nice job with the ones around the front of the house. The colors were vivid and the plants were interesting. You'll notice that there's no sign of the curved walls out here either.

Some of the roses had names. It shouldn't be surprising that one was named for Georgiana, as she founded the Portland Rose Society and is considered the founder of the Portland Rose Festival. The inclusion of the Chihuly rose, obviously named for the living artist by that name, shows that the gardener does not stick to historical plants.

Georgiana Pittock, aka "Gold Struck", grandiflora

Lady Emma Hamilton

Chihuly, floribunda

There is a path around the edge of the front of the property and there are large signs in spots describing what you are seeing. The first told us all about the view to the north. Here, the World's Fair had been held in 1905. Now, it is an industrial area.  The second big viewing area is to the east and you can see more of the downtown area. Unfortunately, the clouds in the distance kept us from seeing the Cascade Range, including Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens. Total bummer!

By now, it had been a heck of a long time since we'd eaten, so we hiked back out to the car. I said that I wanted to eat in something that had a local flavor. J found what sounded like a good place for dinner and at 5:32, we headed for it. Navigating city traffic at that hour wasn't fun, nor was trying to parallel park, but I managed both.

At 5:45 (43595), I parked a bit down the street on the opposite side from Pizzicato Northwest, which is at 505 NW 23rd Avenue, in a corner building, that could have been a bank at one time. There were two levels for eating and you ordered at the counter and they brought the food to you.  Feeling in need of vegetation, we both ordered a small house salad for $6.25. That seemed a bit high for a small salad, but what was brought to us was anything but small. It had so much of each of red leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, red onions, carrots, and cucumbers with a delicious balsamic dressing.  We each got a soda from the refrigerated case. We decided to split a medium (12") Salsiccia Roma pizza, which had fennel sausage, red onions and roasted peppers. At $22, it was not cheap, but it was delicious.

At 6:45, we left for our next destination. By 7:05, we'd done a fair amount of circling around to find a parking space. The lots were rather pricey, so I was more than thrilled to find a free spot on the street at 7:10 (43597). It was a short walk and we got to see some of the downtown.

We reached Powell's City of Books at 7:14. A bookstore is a dangerous thing for my family and this one is huge. J, luckily, had a list of what she was looking for. Having been here two years ago, I felt safe. However, I forgot that Powell's buys used books and that's what you mostly see. So, the inventory goes through a lot of changes. I found a book of crochet patterns of literary characters. I'm planning to relearn crocheting, so this may well get used. Most unfortunately, they had some books by Terry Pratchett, a favorite author, that I wasn't sure were in my collection. Mentally subtracting three hours, I thought there might be a good chance that my husband was at home. He was and was kind enough to go in and look at my collection with the phone in hand. He searched as I read titles and I wound up with three that I did not have at home. I also got a Powell's photo postcard and a Powell's book basket pin for my pin collection. (I have a lot of collections.)

At 8:55, we were back in the car ready for the next destination. It took some more circling, but then at 9:04 (43598), we were parked again. The walk was longer, but at 9:10 we joined the line outside of the original Voodoo Donuts. It was an eclectic group and the line moved well. Soon, we could see the funky inside of the small space. (The one in Denver has much more line space inside.) Below, you can see the bill that J paid.

 

We left the store at 9:26 and were back in the car at 9:32. Surprisingly, it didn't take long to get back to the area of the hotel. I decided to get gas to save time in the morning. We found a Shell station at 9:45 (43598)  at 15 NE Broadway, where gas was $3.25 a gallon. Ouch! But, with my Fuel Rewards card, at least we saved 15 cents a gallon. So, 10. 047 gallons came to $31.24.
At 10 (43606), we were back at the hotel and soon enjoying the Voodoo Doll doughnut and the Portland Cream. Both were really good. We saved the other two for tomorrow.

 Once again, we had to pack up everything, because we will be in our last hotel tomorrow night. We also tried to get to bed a little early, because we have to leave very early to be able to get to all the places we want to tomorrow.
Well, you can tell I was in a city today, since I only drove 15 miles. However, I did take 506 photos. So, there's that.